Spontaeous Albino Darwin?????

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morelia_morphs

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Hi everyone,

Not sure where to start with this one. Ill do my best to explain. This morning a clutch of 100% Hets were hatching, total of 12 eggs. Doc Rock was over having a look at the snakes (sxr.com.au). He had a look at my eggs and suggested I pipped the remaining 2 eggs. I agreed and was going to do it after he had left. Anyhow, he left and I pipped the 2 remaining eggs, one was ALBINO!!!!! in appearance. As you can imagine, I was in absolute shock. How was it possible? I bred the same normal female to an Albino the year before and got 18 eggs, all 100% Hets, no albinos. The female isnt related to the line from the information I have, the female came from 2 wild caught parents and didnt produce any Albinos when bred to her brother.

I have a clutch of Albino darwins hatchling at the same time, so it will be interesting to compare. The one in the 100% het group looks lighter with more pale markings than the other ones which appear alot more pink/biege . You can probably tell by looking at the photos and photos of the other Albino hatchlings that have been posted

Anyhow here are some photos when I first pipped and after it stuck its head out a couple hours later. Cant wait till it fully emerges!!!! Its early days and could end up being exactly the same as the other Albinos, nonetheless, Im amazed!!!!

Best regards

Mark
 

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Thats really fantastic to hear... I dont know much about it all myself, aside from what i have read.
I was only saying the other day, out of all the albinos i would like. it would have to be either an olive or a darwin..
Hope it all goes well for you
 
WOW!!! :shock: Mark top news, I didn't even know that was possible an albino hatching from only one albino parent?? Pretty exciting stuff hey, I bet your stoked!! :D Congrats!!
 
p.s Obviously that's not if one parent is albino and the other a 100% het, but from a standard darwin... Incredible :D
 
luckystuff mate, only explination imo would be that the wild female must be het, or possibly a sponatnious mutation. either way, congrats, will be interesting to see how it developes!!
 
Thanks everyone but it isnt all good news. Its half way out and looks like it has an enlarged heart, which I have only ever seen in one other jungle hatchling a couple years ago. Likely it will die overnight but is interesting for sure.
 
Very interesting stuff Mark,bummer about one of them having problems,hope the other is fine.
You are right in that it looks a hell of a lot lighter than other albino hatchies.The normals look to be very light as well,already showing good patterning and dont seem to be as red as they usually do.

I guess she must be het but two clutches for 30 eggs giving 2 albinos is what about 7%.Maybe there is something else happening with them,heres hoping.
 
Thanks Ramsayi, only thing is that only one is Albino, making it 1 in 30!

My bad,cant read :oops: maybe because my mind is racing at what possibilities could be happening with that clutch. 3 and a bit % even more curious.
 
Wow thats awesome Mark, hope it pulls through for you.
Even with the heart thing you must be stoked.
 
With the deformity, it seems highly likely that you have a spontaneous mutation which has disabled or inverted a relatively large number of genes on the maternally inherited chromosome. This sort of thing isn't terribly rare and usually would result in an individual which looks like the rest in the clutch but dies. Because this clutch is all het for albino, one mutation will produce an odd one out in terms of colour (if the same mutation had occurred on the paternally inherited chromosome it would have looked normal), but if you'd used two 'normal', two albino snakes, two hets or an albino and a het, the discrepancy wouldn't be there, you'd just get one of those not-so-unusual deformed snakes which doesn't live, the colour wouldn't seem surprising.

The paler than usual colour even for an albino is further cause to suspect of a series of genetic problems, consistent with a section of a chromosome being disabled/inverted, rather than a point mutation which only affects one gene.

Interesting stuff, but unfortunately it means that this snake probably has a lot of defects. If it is indeed a whole section of chromosome which has been disabled/inverted, more than half, perhaps even most of its offspring would be affected (due to the chromosomal recombination).

Another possibility is that the snake is anueploid, with the mother not supplying the chromosome in question at all. If this is the case, the snake would have fertility issues. (This would be a relatively easy, but expensive thing to confirm - you'd just need to do a check of the snake's basic karyotype). A very close examination of the snake's kareotype could confirm the first idea, but that's a little more tricky and you'd also need to either know where to look (I don't believe it is even known which chromosome the albinism/relevant melanin gene is on) or you'd need to very thoroughly examine every chromosome and hope that the g-c banding pattern allowed for it to be easily picked up. Okay, I'm probably just sounding like a genetics nerd by now, sorry!

Interesting case, thanks for sharing :)
 
Thanks Sadji, just the answer I was looking for,you are a walking book on genetics. What you are saying makes alot of sense.

Here is a photo of it after emerged from the egg, all looked ok, apart from the huge beating heart you can see in the photo. The snake is still alive and curled up, looks a little dehydrated, was wondering if anyone with any experience with dehydrated snakes can offer any advice? Being Sunday, there isnt any vets around that would know what to do that are open. Im just keeping the substrate slightly damp, Im amazed it has survived the night!

Amazing how it look super healthy up till it emerged fully. Definitely different than the other Albino hatchies, colourwise.
 

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Thats ok, thought the same thing myself! Not a Leucistic though, has pink eyes. Time will tell if it survives.
 
Wow,

What an amazing time for you Mark!

Good luck whichever way it goes!

Cheers,

Chip
 
keep it very humid nt hatchlings like ridiculusly high humidity . good luck with it all
 
sensational,
i hope all goes well with this little one and
i am hoping we can follow its progress
what name have you given to it
ian
 
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